The Morning Stories
by fialka62
Summary: When you wake up in the morning, you never know if this might be your last. Kate is shot, and Castle is staying as close as he can get. A series-in-progress.
1. The Thing About Mornings

_Originally posted to LJ as separate stories, but the structure of this archive makes it better to post each story as a chapter under one heading. Series ongoing. Shall update with the next chapter next week. _

THE THING ABOUT MORNINGS

Here's the thing about mornings: when you wake up, you have no idea if it's going to be your last. The last time you look in the mirror as you put on a little makeup, just enough so that you look like you've had more than three hours sleep. The last time you put your badge on your belt, and your gun in the holster in the small of your back. Last time you drink a cup of raw sewage instead of the good coffee from Castle's machine, because you still won't admit that yes, sometimes it's nice to have nice things.

You don't know that it's the last time Rick Castle will refuse to stay in the car, or the last time he'll follow you into a warehouse where he doesn't belong. You don't know it's the last time you'll pull your gun and the first time you won't be fast enough.

'Did we get him?' you ask, because the second time, the second shot, that took both of you, him to aim the gun and you to pull the trigger, and you did it without thinking about it, either of you, at least you don't think Castle did and you know you didn't because you were already having a hard time breathing past the fire in your gut.

'We got him, Beckett, we got him. Just hang on.'

The fire's going out now, or maybe it's just spreading, dissipating all the way to your fingers and toes. You were cold before, but now you're not, and you can hear him talking talking talking, like he always does. You never expected that his voice would be the last thing you would ever hear, but somehow that's all right, and you tell him it's okay, just before you drift away into the soft and warm. It's okay, it's just like falling asleep with the TV on.

0—0—0

Once, when he was a kid, Rick Castle stood on his toes and fooled the dumb guy taking tickets into thinking he was tall enough to ride the Cyclone at Palisades Park. He figured out pretty damned fast why there was a height requirement, and while it was kind of fun the first time, to feel his ass lifting five inches off the seat because the safety bar didn't quite meet his lap, the second time, when his ass went five inches and his stomach went fifteen and came out his nose and mouth and practically his eardrums, that time, well, that wasn't so much fun.

His stomach is stuck there now, somewhere high in his throat, and he's got one hand over the hole in her front where the bullet went in, and another over the hole in her back where the bullet came out, and no matter how much pressure he applies, he can't stop the blood. He's often written about blood, but clearly he's not as imaginative as he thought. He's never got it remotely close, never imagined how hot the blood from a living body really is, or how it makes his hands slip against her skin, or how this is, in a way, so horribly like a fantasy of having Nikki Heat limp in his arms, and in another way so horribly, horribly, horribly not.

0—0—0

She can't die. She can't die, because if she does, then he's the one who killed her. He sees this on their faces, Esposito and Ryan, bursting through the waiting room doors like a couple of cowboys bursting into a saloon. He's surprised, actually, that there's no weapons drawn.

'Where is she? How bad is it? What the fuck happened?' Both of them at once, and Castle's not quite sure which one asked what.

'She was still alive when they got her into surgery. That's all I know.' Castle gestures with futile rage at the nurses behind the counter, smugly withholding their information. 'They won't tell me shit. I'm not family.'

'Jesus Christ.' This is Esposito, one hand tugging at the top of his hair. 'Jesus Christ, someone's gotta call her dad.' Clearly, neither he nor Ryan wants to be the one.

'She jumped in front of me.' Castle hasn't meant to say this, but there are things reorganising themselves inside his head and this is one of them: that she told him once he was putting her men in danger by not staying outside, but she never said a word about herself. Maybe if she had, maybe if she'd said it just like that, _you're going to be the one who gets me killed_, maybe then he would have listened. Maybe he'd have stayed outside the goddamn warehouse, instead of stumbling around trying to follow her, and running into a biker with a .45 instead.

'We were following that dealer guy, Delgado. She told me to stay in the car and wait for backup, but I didn't listen. I never listen.' He has their attention now, like he always does when he tells them stories. Nikki Heat stories, harmless fantasies of Beckett in a leather miniskirt, gun stored god knows where, breaking her lovers with her mighty thighs. She would kill him if she knew, kill them all, but hey, they're _guys _and that's what guys do, and a fine-looking woman made a little finer by imagination is just homage to a part of Beckett they all know they'll never have.

There's no imagination here, now, in the story he tells. Just homage to the Beckett they do know, the one Ryan and Esposito follow without question, and if Castle did too, maybe they wouldn't be here. Maybe this would be a story he'd tell about Nikki Heat, but never about the woman behind her, never.

'I came around a corner and there was this guy, and he had a gun, and then she was there.' And then she was thrown back against him and they fell, and somehow they remembered she still had her gun, and he aimed and she fired, and the biker went down, still laughing at the two of them tangled together like broken chairs. Only Castle isn't broken, isn't even shot. And Beckett…Beckett is all over him, his hands and his clothes and his nostrils filled with gunsmoke and blood and there's not enough vomit in the world to put his stomach back where it belongs.

0—0—0

Jim Beckett is a tall man, rangy like his daughter. He has the same square jaw and probably the same wide smile, but not today. The deep-sea eyes she must have got from her mother, because his are a blue that cuts through everything in his path.

The nurses don't dare not give Kate's father the news he seeks, and the news, from the man's face, is not particularly good. 'They've still got her on the table,' he says, joining the huddle in the middle of the waiting room. It's a bigger huddle now than it was two hours ago, when Esposito finally made the call. Montgomery and Lanie from the morgue and god knows how many guys from the precinct, people Castle didn't even know Beckett knew. There's press outside, as well, he's heard, and his publisher on the phone, asking about "his cop" but not forgetting to mention that either way this was going to send Nikki Heat's debut through the roof. Castle sees the dedication page, _in memory of_, and nearly throws up on his phone.

'Bullet hit some artery here' – Beckett's father is gesturing somewhere towards the lower abdomen – 'and they can't get the bleeding to stop. Messed up a bunch of other stuff in there, bones and nerves. Don't know if I heard it all right. She'll walk, if she lives, but not for awhile.'

Jim Beckett's voice is clear and calm, matter of fact. She must have got that from him. 'She'll have the best care money can buy,' Castle finds himself blurting. 'Whatever she needs, sir, I'll make sure she gets it. I promise, I'll take good care of your daughter.'

The man's eyes flicker, and Castle hears, like an echo, another promise beneath the promise. He wonders where the hell that's coming from right now.

0—0—0

It's another day before they let him see her, a day in which stability is finally achieved, a vast improvement over touch-and-go and not-out-of-the-woods-yet. She's woken up briefly twice, once to ask for water, and once to tell her dad to water her plants. The in-and-out-of-consciousness thing doesn't appear to be worrying the doctors, who've been helping that along with some very happy drugs. The precinct has gone back to work, and so have most of the press. Castle's been home long enough to shower and change and throw his bloodstained clothes down the incinerator, like a proper criminal. He feels like a criminal, even though intellect says of course he's not, even though Ryan and Esposito and Montgomery and even his goddamn mother keep assuring him that she was just doing her job, that sometimes this kind of thing happens. He knows that sometimes it happens worse, and he should be insanely happy she's getting off with some scar tissue and a few feet of intestine and maybe at worst, a noticeable limp. His literary mind can see the possibilities, the character layers Nikki Heat will probably gain now that there's no more danger of posthumous homage. It's enough to make him want to throw up all over again.

And Nikki Heat wouldn't look like this, lying in her hospital bed. Nikki Heat would be exquisitely pale, dark shining hair falling perfectly over her shoulders and her lips tinged faintly red. Kate Beckett doesn't look anything like that. She looks like her skin is made of old wax, pressed over too much bone with grubby hands. Someone's washed her hair, but they haven't attempted to comb it; her eyes are bruised, her lips are grey and she looks altogether like someone who recently lost a bucket of blood all over his Armani pants.

Her hand is grey, too, and cold when he picks it up. He doesn't remember the skin being so thin before, lines of blue with no underlying warmth. No response either, even when he wraps her fingers around his, trying to heat them with his breath as if they're out skating in Rockefeller Center and she's forgotten her gloves.

'Kate,' he says, because he really doesn't get to use her name much, and _Beckett _just doesn't seem the right way to address a woman who needed two rounds of surgery to put her insides back together because Richard Castle doesn't know how to do what he's been told. And then, because she prefers things simple and to the point, he adds, 'Wake up.'

He notices a flicker across the stillness of her face. An eyelash, a muscle. An infinitesmal response. 'Kate, wake up,' he orders, and yes, there's the faintest movement of her fingers, a hint of pressure. 'We've got a body, come on. No time to sleep, Detective Beckett, we've got work to do. Come on, Kate, wake up.'

Her eyes struggle to open, once, twice, but the lids are too heavy for her weakened state. He strokes her forehead, as if that can lighten the load. Just a bit, just enough for her to open her eyes, and focus and see him. It matters, somehow, very much, that she sees him, that she knows he's here, and not just because she saved his life, but because _he's here_. It's a thing that belonged only to Alexis, once, that being there no matter what, but he thinks that maybe he can extend this to Beckett too, to be there for her because it's right to be there, not because there's something else he wants.

'Hey,' he says. Her lips move, make a sound like air across the top of a bottle. It sounds kind of like a _hey_ back. 'I'm sorry,' he babbles, before he loses the tenuous contact. 'I'm sorry I didn't listen. I'm sorry I didn't stay where you told me to stay.'

'S'okay,' she breathes. 'Gimme week kicker ass.'

'A week, sure. Handbags at dawn,' he answers, but her eyes are already closed, her face just a little softer. A little less like death, a little more like sleep.

0—0—0

Here's the thing about mornings: just when you think you've had your last, maybe you really haven't. Maybe you've just fallen slowly off a cliff, and it's a long, long, long way down. Maybe when you finally land, you're fairly sure that an awful lot of time has passed, that something about you isn't quite right and maybe never will be again. But there's also someone sitting beside you, dead asleep with his head pressed against your side and your hand tucked under his chin. And you like the way it feels to have him close, to drift back to sleep on the tide of his snoring, in and out, in and out, to know that whatever's happened, you'll both be here when the next morning comes around.


	2. The Thing About Mornings, Too

Apologies for the delay. Life does annoying things sometimes.

* * *

Rick Castle can pinpoint the exact moment he fell for Detective Kate Beckett. Day damn one, as a matter of fact. Okay, the very end of day one, and had he expected her to turn down his invitation to dinner? No, he most certainly had not. Wasn't it every fan's dream to have dinner with the creator of their hero, and wasn't Kate Beckett a fan of Derrick Storm? And he'd _certainly _not expected Miss Buttoned-Up Supercop to turn him down with a leer and a whisper of opportunities lost, and to walk -- no, saunter -- no, _sashay _-- away with all the loose-hipped swagger of a model on a Fashion Week catwalk.

_Swagger_. Yes, that was the word. Beckett had class, and Beckett had swagger, and how often did he see those two things wrapped up in a woman who was six feet tall in heels and wore them anyway? But it wasn't just the class and the swagger and the legs (dear god, the legs) and the chutzpah of showing up at one of his readings in a dress that screamed _fuck me against a wall_ not because she wanted him to, but because she wanted him to know he _couldn't._

By then, of course, it hardly mattered. He'd already had his _coup de foudre_, his struck-by-lightning moment, and all it had taken was a blue buttondown shirt seen from the back.

---

This morning, Castle feels a sense of accomplishment. After all the months of teasing, he's finally got his muse in his bed.

Of course, this isn't quite the way he'd originally imagined getting Kate Beckett into bed. Originally, it had involved a shockingly expensive dinner, maybe followed by dancing of the old sort. Or maybe preceded by a show, but anyway, a date. A real, honest-to-goodness, pick you up at eight, walk you to the door after kind of date. The kind he hasn't had in...well, actually, quite a while. Oh, he's had sex, lots of sex, but that usually involved a chance meeting of like-minded adults at some function or another, not the held-breath footshuffle of _would you like to go out with me sometime_? He's actually even tried that on Beckett, more than once, and got shot down every damned time. Still, he'd have kept on trying. He's bored of women he doesn't have to chase, and experience has taught him that if he goes on asking, eventually he'll wear her down. Then he could get on with part two, which involves sweeping her off her feet.. Or at least finding out if it's even possible to sweep an immensely practical woman who's nearly as tall as he is off her feet at all. He'd expected, at the very least, for the trying to go on being damned good fun.

Instead, he'd got her shot, and while he might, in his more outlandish moments, have imagined carrying Beckett over his threshold and off to bed, he hadn't expected this would be because she couldn't walk up the stairs. He hadn't expected her morning-after coma to be the result of a hefty dose of Demerol and not sexual satisfaction. Most of all, he hadn't expected to spend their first night together sitting by her side fully dressed, instead of undressed and in bed with her, making her pulse race instead of thinking about checking to be sure she still had one.

'She's lost so much weight, Dad. That can't be good.'

He hasn't heard Alexis come in, and he's not quite sure if he should be embarrassed about being caught. At least Beckett no longer looks like an escapee from Madame Tussaud's on a hot day. Yes, she's still horribly pale, but it's more of a fashionably vampyric pallor now, less grey and cadaverous than three weeks ago.

'Don't worry, pumpkin,' he whispers, giving his daughter a one-armed hug. 'We'll feed her up before we release her back into the wild.

Alexis makes a noise, something between a cluck of impatience and an 'mmm' of concern. 'Well, you better feed yourself before you fall over. It's past noon and even Grandma's up and knocking around the kitchen. She sent me to find out where you were. And by the way, if Detective Beckett wakes up and finds you watching her sleep --'

'I know, Death by the Fiery Glare of Doooom.'

Alexis makes the noise again, and is gone. Castle leans back in the chair, trying to adjust his back to its now rather uncomfortable form. He doesn't need to be brooding over Beckett, he knows. She's long out of danger, and at the rate she's pushing herself through rehab, she'll probably be back at her desk by the end of the month. She's also well enough to be extremely grumpy when she's awake, which might actually be the secret to why he's sitting here while she's still asleep.

'Castle?'

Or not. Damn, first the lies and the poker face, then the feigning sleep; he's starting to wonder if this dissembling thing comes much more easily to her than he ever dreamed.

'Yeah. I'm here.'

She moves slowly, rolling from her side to stretch out on her back. He takes the opportunity to perch in the newly vacated space, still warm from her curled-up legs.

'Castle, why are you in my apartment?'

'I'm not,' he answers. 'You're in mine.'

Her sleepy gaze finally focuses on his face. She rubs at her eyes weakly, as if trying to make this picture go away and another one appear. One in which she's home, safe and strong, about to jump out of bed and start the day. 'You agreed to this,' he reminds her. 'You're not well enough to be on your own just yet, and you were sick of the hospital. Remember?'

As if to prove his point, her muscles lose the battle with gravity, and the arm she's raised to wipe the sleep from her eyes drops heavily to her chest.

'I remember. So I'm hiding in the bat cave.'

'You're not hiding, you're recovering. Which is going to take some time.' At least six months, according to the surgeons who put her insides back together, closer to a year according to the physical therapist. According to Beckett, she should have been fine last week, but damaged nerves don't regenerate by sheer force of will, or she'd be out on the streets instead of here with him.

Her eyes are wide open now, slightly dilated with fear. Of him and his bat cave, maybe. Maybe the possibility -- slim, but still present -- that she can walk, but she'll never be able to run, which would mean never being able to pass the physical to get back on the line. Which would mean, essentially, the end of her career.

'But right now, first things first,' he says, taking her hand, faking a brightness he doesn't feel. 'Martha makes a mean eggs benedict for Sunday brunch. You feeling up to joining us?'

She moves her hand gently out of his. 'I'm not very hungry.'

'You have to eat something besides iron supplements.'

He gets up. Give her space, Martha keeps telling him. It's true, he does have a tendency to hover when his women get hurt -- Castle ignores the fact that he's just mentally placed Kate Beckett inside his tiny family circle -- but what else should he do? Let her fall instead of reaching out to catch her? Leave her rehab to the hour a week the police department's completely inadequate insurance would cover, when he's got all the money in the world?

He covers by going to retrieve Beckett's robe from the parallel bars in the corner of the room. It's a deep forest green, and yes, when he bought it he was indeed thinking about how it would shape itself around her, and bring out the colour of her eyes. Also about not being too extravagant, choosing thick terrycloth instead of silk and velvet. She was finally being transferred out of ICU and he'd wanted her to have something dignified to wear when people came to visit, but a nightgown felt too personal, and he wasn't even sure it was the kind of thing she'd wear. So the robe, which he chickened out of giving her directly, draping it over her while she was asleep. She knows, of course, that it's from him, but neither of them have mentioned that. Like they don't mention where he's sleeping if she's in his bedroom, or his sudden desire to furnish it with rehab equipment and a 48 inch flatscreen with built-in dvd player and cable tv.

'Come on,' he says, holding the robe spread open, high in front of his face. 'I won't even peek at your nighties.'

What he's really saying is, I won't watch you try to get out of bed. I'll pretend not to notice what a struggle every movement is, and how little patience you have for yourself like this.

'Damn it, Castle,' she snaps, as if she's read his thoughts. 'If you want me to get up, give me a goddamn hand.'

She's sitting up with her feet on the floor, but that's as far as she can get by herself. Castle hangs the robe over his shoulder and extends his hands to her, palms up and forearms level, like the therapist showed him. Maximum support for her, maximum leverage for him. Together, they get her to her feet, and he's relieved to see she seems relatively steady as he drapes the robe around her shoulders and helps her get her arms through the sleeves.

'You ready?' he asks softly. It's more than ready to move, it's ready to face his family, to sit at a table and have a meal with him and his mother and his child.

'No,' she answers, in one of those amazing, disarmingly honest moments of hers. He can't quite read the look in her eyes, more used to reading them from roughly level height. Barefoot, she's so much smaller than he thinks of her, thinner, paler, porcelain-fragile. As if the formidable Detective Beckett is just another character he's made up, no more the real Kate than Nikki Heat.

Her shoulders feel tense under his hands, or maybe he's making her tense by standing too close. Her own hands are pressed flat against his chest as if to say _no further_, but he's already lifting her face, finding her lips, brushing them oh-so-softly. Once. Twice.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispers for the ten thousandth time.

She pushes gently against his chest, finally forcing him to move away. 'You didn't shoot me, Castle, Delgado did. Now get me my crutches and stop feeling so damn guilty, okay?'

She sways slightly when he lets go of her shoulders, rebalancing to transfer the majority of her weight to the leg she can still feel. He waits a moment to be sure she's got it before moving off to get the crutches. Wooden, under the arm crutches, even though the metal ones with armbands are supposed to be better for long-term use. One look at her face when the therapist brought her a pair of those and he knew exactly what she was thinking -- _forever_. He'd gone downstairs to the hospital pharmacy and bought her a pair of wooden ones straight away. Uncomfortable, less controllable, bad for her back and wrists and shoulders. But clearly made for temporary use. And then Alexis had gone and painted them neon pink, with little blue and yellow and green balloons and at least they made Beckett smile, just a tiny bit, whenever he handed them to her.

As she's smiling now, maneuvering her way carefully across the room. And Castle takes his own opportunity to stride, no to saunter, no, to _swagger_ just a little as he moves ahead to open the door, because he's finally kissed Kate Beckett and she doesn't seem to have minded at all.


	3. Another Thing About Mornings Part 1

_This one is turning out to be much longer than the others, so I'm breaking it into logical sections. Part 1 here, part 2 mostly finished. The last part, I'm afraid, is with the muse, who appears to be still unable to get a flight back from wherever she buggered off to over the spring holiday. _

_Somewhat revised from the Part 1 originally posted on LJ...a very long time ago. _

o---o---o

ANOTHER THING ABOUT MORNINGS (Part 1)

You have a ritual for mornings, every morning, whether or not you go to work. You get up, turn on the coffeemaker you've loaded the night before, shower while the water drips through. You dry your hair while drinking the first cup, gulp down a yogurt and a slice of dry toast with the second, dress during the third. When that's done, you put your father's watch on your left wrist, your mother's ring around your neck and -- if you are going to work -- fix your gun and your badge onto your belt. Only then are you ready to go out to face the day.

You woke after the second surgery and saw your father sitting by the bed, holding a ziplock bag with the watch and the ring and you wondered if someone had collected your effects and given them to him, if someone had expected you to die. There was blood on the watchband. Maybe that explained the bolt of terror that shot through you as he turned the bag over and over in his hands. You wanted to tell him that you were still here, wanted him to tell you that everything was going to be okay, but you couldn't stop watching the bag, shimmering and fading as unconsciousness stole you away.

o---o---o

It's Saturday night, which is supposed to be date night, which until recently has been (at least for Kate Beckett) try-to-work-as-late-as-you-can night. This is not because there are never any dates -- there are, sometimes, and sometimes they're even with guys she's willing to see twice. Not so much of late, that's true, but these things have a rhythm, a cycle. She gets lonely, she gets more receptive to the odd (and she's a cop, so they're usually odd) advance. She plays the field for awhile, maybe even takes a few guys to bed (her bed, always. She knows too much about what can happen to a woman who goes to an unknown location with an unknown male; this outweighs the danger of letting a stranger into her home). Either the sex is mediocre and she gets bored, or he gets frustrated with her working hours (unsurprising, so she doesn't fight about it) and after a couple of three date stands, or at the most, three-week courtships, she'll find herself slipping back into a comfortable shell of indifference, even gratitude for her undemanding, uncoupled state. With a job like hers, she _likes _coming home to silence at the end of the day.

As for the men, it's not their fault. She knows she makes a terrible girlfriend. She'd make an even lousier wife, so it's fortunate she's not terribly interested in marriage. Occasionally, there's someone like Will, someone with whom she can see a future that extends past next week, but maybe Castle was right about them being too much alike for it to work. Her ego was bruised when Will chose his career over her (twice!) but nothing worth brooding about. She understands Will Sorenson, _is_ Will Sorenson; they both love their jobs more than they'll ever love anyone else.

Then, six weeks ago, she felt her life slip away, and though at the time it had seemed perfectly all right (perhaps even pleasant) to have come to the end, coming back has made her think of all the things other people seem to take for granted. Family, love, a close circle of friends. Things she herself once took for granted, and probably now will never have. She's still happiest on her own (she's an only child, so she's used to playing by herself), but since she was shot she's started looking down the line, wondering if she'll enjoy her solitude quite so much when she's sixty-five and they're forcing her to retire, when her father will be gone and she'll be looking at twenty, maybe thirty years of being absolutely, completely alone. That, she has to admit, does not really seem like a future she wants.

She's suffered through the obligatory visits by the police psychologist, has been duly counselled about delayed post-traumatic stress. She's been expecting something more mundane, nightmares replaying the event, jumping at loud noises. Instead, getting shot seems to have torn the scab off some ancient injury, something incurrred so long ago she's forgotten exactly what it was. Her first thought was, of course, her mother, because without a doubt losing her mother derailed every plan she'd ever made and every thing about herself she'd ever thought she'd known, and she's not going to pretend to anyone (least of all herself) that she's gotten over that loss. Carrying it and accepting it are not the same; she's found strength in one, but has no desire to achieve the other.

But her present unrest seems deeper, older than that. Or maybe she's just a control freak having an understandable reaction to the indignity of needing _things _to perform basic bodily functions, needing people to oversee the things, and keep her clean, and decide when she eats and eliminates and gets the drugs that keep the pain distant enough for her to function. And even though she doesn't need that kind of assistance any more, thank god (except the drugs, but she's now allowed to administer those herself) she still feels as if she's drifting in and out of her own life, waking and sleeping at her body's will, never sure what time or what day it is or how long it's been since she was last conscious. She imagines herself like this when she's old, when there's no bright light of recovery on the horizon, and no friend to offer shelter while she heals, and hates herself for thinking that it might have been better if she'd just slipped quietly away when she had the chance.

Castle bursts into the room, interrupting her increasingly morbid train of thought.

'Okay, we've got Casablanca, Dark Victory, Bringing up Baby..'

He starts to jump on the bed with his pile of DVDs, and remembers just in time why he shouldn't. The DVDs slide forward as he short-stops, and Casablanca falls into her lap. She bends her head and pretends to be fascinated by the box while Castle settles himself more gingerly on the edge of the bed, trying not to jar her too much. The soft-tissue wounds have healed, but the bullet hit bone on its way out and the fragments have torn her sciatic nerve to shreds. The first three weeks, her whole left leg was numb. Then it began to tingle horribly, like it was waking up. Now it's like the growing pains she used to get as a child, but a thousand times worse. Searingly worse. Napalm pooling deep in her hip, pouring down the back of her leg. Her physical therapist swears that pain on movement is a very good sign (god knows she inflicts enough of it); it means the nerve is still conducting and will eventually heal. How much time and how much healing is presently up for grabs. Meanwhile, Kate has the happy drugs (though not as happy as the narcotics she had in ICU), which take care of most of the pain (most of the time), probably because they tend to render her unconscious (she wouldn't have thought it was possible to sleep so much and still be so exhausted). The rest she can handle as long as she (and anything she's lying on) stays absolutely still.

Castle is still reciting movie titles. HMV must have been having a two-for-one sale on moldy oldies, judging by the size of the stack. 'This,' she says, handing him Casablanca, just to get him to shut up. She knows he means well, but sometimes it's harder to have him around, reminding her that she's in his space because Lanie works a hundred hours a week and Sorenson finally got the summons to DC and her father wouldn't know how to look after her even if she wanted to let him. She barely knows Rick Castle (less, anyway, than he thinks he knows her), but she has no one else and considering the choices she keeps making, probably never will.

It's not her thing to feel sorry for herself, but suddenly, _really_, all she wants to do is put the covers over her head and cry.

'Do we have a decision?'

Kate opens her eyes to see Alexis shouldering her way through the door, cradling an enormous bowl of popcorn as if it intends to fly away at any moment. 'Madame La Detective has chosen Bogart,' Castle answers, in an atrocious French accent. He swings off the bed to put the DVD in the machine while Alexis settles herself oh-so-carefully on Kate's other side.

'I hope you like salt and butter,' Alexis says shyly, offering Kate a dip at the bowl. 'I put them in the oil so all the popcorn gets coated evenly.'

Kate dredges up her company smile and takes a few kernels of corn. Her appetite is still non-existent, and if she's going to force something down, she'd rather save the effort for something with actual nutritional value. On the other hand, she doesn't want to hurt the girl, who's clearly going out of her way to make Kate feel less like an intruder in Castleworld.

'Alexis makes the best popcorn ever,' Castle tells her, settling himself back where he was, casually reaching over her lap to help himself to a generous fistful from the bowl. Kate drifts away before Ilsa ever gets to Rick's, feeling like a five-year-old falling asleep between her parents, and if she's aware of how odd it is that those two people are Castle and his daughter, well, she's not aware of it for long.

o---o---o

When she wakes again, the room is silent, dark but for the flickering bluish-grey light of the tv. Castle is still beside her, watching something with Edward G Robinson, sound off and subtitles on. He stirs as soon as she does, sliding down the pillows until he's curled on his side, facing her like a mirror.

'Hey,' he says, softly. 'You alright?'

Kate pauses to take stock. The ache in her hip is deep and steady, smoldering embers rather than napalm. That means she has about an hour before the pain medication completely wears off.

'Okay for the moment,' she answers. 'Shouldn't you be sleeping somewhere else?'

'I wanted to see the end of the movie.' He points over her shoulder. 'Anyway, don't worry. I come with built-in chaperone.'

Kate half-turns and sees Alexis asleep behind her, one hand still in the mostly empty bowl. 'Popcorn coma?'

Castle smiles at the feeble joke. And then he says nothing, and goes on saying nothing for what seems like a very long time.

'What?' she finally says.

'This is nice.' He reaches out and trails his fingertips over her shoulder, as if making sure that she is indeed there.

Her heart stops while she tries to process this turn of events, tries to fit this Castle with the one she knows. 'What, listening to me snore?'

He shakes his head; this is clearly not the response he wants. And then he's hovering over her, and before she even quite realises what's about to happen, it's already happening. Thought falls away; there's only this moment, this kiss, which may have gone on for seconds or hours, going nowhere, just content to be what it is. From somewhere she can't even fathom comes a longing so intense she can't think, can't move, can't breathe. She's breaking so slowly even her own mouth doesn't notice, occupied as it is with his.

He pulls back just slightly, enough for air to pass between their lips, and she hears a small, thin voice saying, 'Stop. Please.'

He's gone in a flash, as if she's dreamt the whole thing. Kate rolls back onto her side and puts a hand over her face. 'I'm sorry,' Castle whispers, from somewhere on the other side of the room. 'I'm so sorry, you're right, I shouldn't have done that.'

There's no anger in his voice, only remorse and something that she refuses to let herself recognise as tenderness.

'It's fine,' she manages. 'Just please go.'

Her throat feels like there's a hand wrapped tight around her neck. There are rules about who's allowed to see her lose it, and while she has definitely allowed Castle to witness emotions she would never, ever express in front of Esposito or Ryan, his all-access pass does not include a front-row seat to the complete dissolution of the woman who used to be Detective Kate Beckett.

'Are you--'

'_Please_.' Her hand is already wet; she can't be any more coherent.

'Okay.' He trails his fingers over hers for a moment, which doesn't help one bit. Then he makes his way to the other side of the bed and gently gathers his sleeping child into his arms. Somehow, it's the last thing she can bear. The fragile barrier disintegrates and Kate twists herself into a ball, the last of her control applied to achieving meltdown in silence.

o---o---o

_End of part 1. Oh, and just for the record, they were watching Casablanca long before Martha started quoting it last week :)_

_Reviews are like chocolate: not necessary for life, but awfully yummy when you get some. _


	4. Another Thing About Mornings Part 2

_Many apologies to those who have waited so long for this to be finished. Hopefully, your patience will finally be rewarded. _

_This is the continuation of the last chapter, which is actually Part 1 of the story **Another Thing About Mornings**. Parts 3 and 4 to follow much, much sooner than this one, I promise._

0-0-0-0-0

Richard Castle has always been a relatively happy boy, at least as far as he's allowed his mother to notice. Martha, nobody's fool, knows that there is more to the story of her son than he'll ever want to tell (though she has, through careful reading of his books, found a few things she rather wishes she didn't know). And of course it's her job as his mother to keep his ego within bounds. But there are times, like now, that she feels his pain so deeply that not all the wine in the world can wash it down.

No one says, however, that it doesn't help.

'What's the matter, kiddo?' she says, placing a full glass of Merlot in front of her son, who's sitting in the living room with his head in his hands. It's a posture she's not seen from him since...well, a long time ago.

'I kissed the girl—'

'Well, good for you!' she declares, raising her glass. 'And about damn time.'

'…and made her cry.' He straightens up, wiping his hands over his face as he does, and she sees that Detective Beckett's not the only one.

'So screw Georgie Porgie. What the hell did he know?'

'Enough to stop before the girl kicked his butt.' Richard gives a shaky laugh and accepts the wine she pushes towards him.

'Kate Beckett is not capable of kicking anybody's butt at the moment,' Martha reminds him softly. 'And did you ever stop to think that a little TLC might be exactly what she needs right now?'

'There's TLC and then there's not appropriate considering the circumstances.'

'What circumstances? That you love each other?'

He puts the glass down and starts to protest, but she cuts him off with a wave of her hand. 'Richard, we all love Detective Beckett. I would hope she loves us in one way or another as well.'

'But not like _that_.'

'Probably yes like _that_, at least where you're concerned. And while I will agree that these are probably not the best circumstances for finally exploring new horizons, I think you can rest assured that you are _not _repulsive to her. I'm sure those tears are about something else.'

He sighs and reaches absentmindedly for the wine, sipping it as his eyes narrow and dim. It's the same look he has when he's plotting Nikki Heat in his head; she could wave her hand in front of his face and he wouldn't react.

'Maybe I should do some research on painkillers. See if there's something better than what she's on.'

'Because you with your medical degree can prescribe something else.'  
'Well, then maybe I should find her a different doctor.'

'You've already got her the best neurosurgeon in New York.'

'Well, maybe I should look in Europe.'

'Won't make the nerves grow back any faster.'

'A new physical therapist? Maybe she should be doing yoga. Or acupuncture. That's supposed to be good for pain. I know this guy in Chinatown—'

'Richard.' Martha reaches for his hand before he gets lost in the heroic story he wants to tell himself. 'You can't fix this. The doctors told you it takes a long, long time to come back from these kinds of injuries.' She squeezes his hand once and then reaches for her wine again. 'The good news is, right now the pain is probably as bad as it's going to get.'

'How is that good news?'

Martha raises her glass in a mental toast to the regenerative powers of the young. 'Because that means from here on out, it can only get better. But you can't make that happen any faster. She's just going to have to take it step by step.'

He's staring up at her like he's a child again, stubborn eyes filled with tears that big boys don't shed. 'I can't just stand around and do nothing. It's like watching her drown.'

'She's not going to drown, Richard. Don't be so dramatic.'

'Spoken like a true...' He wisely lets the barb drop before he can stick her with it, staring instead into the red liquid swirling in his glass. 'I just don't want her to think she has to do this all by herself. That we don't see what she's going through. That we don't care.'

'Oh, Richard.' Martha sighs, and pats his arm. He's a silly romantic boy, but he's her silly romantic boy and a better man than most people would ever guess. 'Just keep holding out your hand. I promise, when she really needs you, she'll take it.'

0-0-0

The soft knock at the door belongs to Martha; Kate knows this because Castle's mother frequently comes over to 'keep our dear patient company' when Castle needs to get some writing done. Kate suspects this has more to do with the time she tripped over the damn crutches because she was too stoned on tramadol to remember how they worked, than with any interesting contribution she's able to make to the conversation. That is, in fact, one of the nicer things about being visited by Martha - Kate doesn't have to talk, she just has to listen. The tales of Old Broadway are probably more than slightly embellished (Castle clearly having inherited the gift), but certainly if Martha knows anything, it's how to entertain. Just exactly why Castle's mother would want to spend that much energy entertaining her is a mystery Kate's not up to solving. Maybe Martha just likes having a new audience, rapt and captive.

She enters before Kate can respond, carrying a tray with two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice, a croissant, and a small crock of butter. A least one of the glasses of orange juice has a generous helping of vodka in it; Kate can smell it from across the room.

'Sit up, darling, and eat your breakfast,' Martha says, in a voice that sounds kind, but somehow makes it clear she'll brook no argument. Kate doesn't have it in her to argue anyway. Crying has never made her feel better. If anything she feels like she's woken up with a bad case of the flu.

She raises herself as slowly as possible, trying not to move any more than necessary. It doesn't stop the white hot flare that shoots down her leg, momentarily shorting out the signals to every other muscle in her body.

When she's regained enough control to open her eyes, Martha is holding out the bottle of little white pills.

'I don't want to take them anymore.' Kate puts all her energy into getting herself into position, ignoring Martha's hand. 'They're turning me into somebody else.'

'Pain will also turn into you somebody else,' Martha says, with a look that suggests she knows. 'Take the pills, and then let's see about getting you out of this room for a few hours.'

'I don't want to go out.'

'Then take two and you won't even notice.' Martha gets up and begins rifling through the small selection of clothes which constitutes the entirety of Kate's wardrobe at Casa Castle. 'Good lord, child,' she adds, lifting one item at a time out of the single drawer. 'When Gok Wan suggested fifteen essential pieces of clothing, he did not mean that ten of them should be your underwear.'

'I'm not going anywhere, Martha. I don't need to dress up.'

Kate hears the petulant whine in her own voice and cringes at the sound. Martha, for her part, seems wholly unperturbed. 'Perhaps not, my dear,' she says, turning around and holding something up. 'But you should still be not going anywhere in a silk bedjacket, not an NYPD sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. Now, eat your breakfast so you can take your pills, and if you're not going to let me drag you out of this room, you're at least going to let us bring something of the world to you.'

'Please, Martha, I don't want to see anyone right now.'

'I didn't say person, I said something of the world.' Martha folds the sweatshirt and carefully replaces it. 'Let's take care of objection one, and then we'll work on objection two.'

Kate looks at the items on the tray and wonders if Martha would notice if she drank the orange juice with the vodka instead.

0-0-0

Torture time is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3pm.

Kate is not usually one to shrink from difficult chores - if she were, she'd never be able to look another person in the eye and tell them that someone they loved was lying dead in the city morgue. But ever since they stepped her physical therapy up to three times a week her life seems to veer between the agony of PT, the recovery from it, and the twisting anxiety of waiting for it to happen again. She feels flattened by the drugs and violated when she doesn't take them. There's no middle ground, no balance she can find. Hell, right now she can't even stand on her own two feet, let alone walk out of Castle's loft and back into her former orderly life.

The massage table the physical therapist uses is just high enough that on a day with minimal strength - a day very much like today, in fact - getting onto it and getting herself into position pretty much leaves Kate shaking with exhaustion, not to mention dread. Janelle wraps her strong, dark hands around Kate's left foot and ankle, and Kate dredges up her best poker face as the therapist straightens her leg. She doesn't fool herself into thinking the face can fool Janelle, but she needs to preserve what little dignity she may have left.

'On a scale of one to ten, how bad is that?' Janelle asks, pressing Kate's foot to a ninety-degree angle. She always does this, taking measure of the pain before she starts to inflict a more serious kind of hell. Kate thinks of it as a scale between _normal human being_ and _give me my gun_, with most days hovering somewhere around _please dear god don't do that again. _Today, she's already past _please dear god_, and it's her own damn fault for trying to see if her hip could bear any weight at all after Martha left. (The answer was _no_ and two hours of _give me my gun_ before she finally broke down and took the goddamn pill.) She's tempted to round it up to get a slightly easier session, or maybe none at all, but she also knows that the more of this she can endure, the faster she'll be back at her desk in the precinct, where she belongs.

'Six,' she says, and sees Janelle's left eyebrow flicker. 'Okay, maybe seven.'

Janelle takes that as a reasonably accurate answer and the routine begins. Slow stretches, followed by the agonising set of movements designed to keep the hip joint from fusing while her injuries heal. By the time they start on those, Kate's jaw is already aching from clenching her teeth and she's drenched in an icy sweat. But she's keeping it together, desperately casting her mind into some other place the way she's been taught, trying to ignore what's happening to her bones and muscles and nerves. Sometimes she's even on top of the pain for a few brief moments, the way she can remember getting on top of the pain at the Academy, pushing herself through her final physical exam with a freshly sprained ankle and a jagged cut just under her brow bleeding into her eye. The cut healed without a trace, but the ankle still sometimes twinges, especially after a long day in heels. She tries to concentrate on that, the days when she's on her feet and running ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours, and god knows by the time she's heading home it feels like she's walking on broken stones, but if she can ignore that kind of pain (a four or five all its own) then she should be able to ignore all of this as well. At least until they get to the part where Janelle uses all her weight to push Kate's knee back towards her shoulder and a bolt of white lightning splits her body and tears its way out of her throat.

At last, the agony of those final moves ends and Kate slowly becomes aware of the fluff in her mouth from the pillow she has pressed over her face and of someone sobbing, a long way off. It's like coming out of anaesthetic, the second time so much worse than the first (which she hardly remembers at all). Floating in an angry burning sea, so nauseous she's unable to move, and only slowly realising (to her eternal shame) that the woman who's been crying for what seems like fucking _hours_ is herself.

'Tell me the truth,' Janelle says, directly in her ear. 'You've been trying to walk without your crutches, right?'

It's too much effort to lie, so Kate settles for a nod.

'And how well did that work for you?'

Kate shakes her head.

'On a scale of one to ten, that was probably a what? Fifteen?'

Kate tries to lick dry lips with an even dryer tongue. 'Maybe a twelve.'

'You can't do that, Kate. You can't put weight on that side until the nerves are regrown, or you risk the kind of damage that will keep you from ever walking again.'

Panic now, on top of everything else. She has to walk. She has to be able to go back to work. She has to go back to being _herself_.

A towering wave of terror drags her into its center, and it takes a few pounding heartbeats before she remembers that she's not really under water, that it's okay to breathe. But when she tries to speak, the words will only pour out of her eyes as tears, instead of out of her mouth.

'I want to go home,' she finally manages. 'I want to stop being like this.'

'Well, you won't get there the way you're going about it,' Janelle answers, in a tone that brooks absolutely no sympathy. 'So first you can start by taking your meds properly, not just when you can't stand the pain another second. The drugs you're on have other ingredients that you need, and they won't work unless you take them regularly. And no, you cannot substitute over-the-counter ibuprofen. Which I'm sure you're taking by the fistful, and that will surely give you an ulcer on top of everything else.'

'When I take the others all I want to do is sleep.'

'Because that's what your body needs. Stop fighting yourself.'

Kate closes her eyes. It wouldn't do to admit that she's been fighting herself for so long now, and about so many things, she's not sure she remembers how to do anything else.

Janelle pulls a chair up to the massage table and sits down, resting one hand on Kate's arm. It feels like comfort. It feels almost like a friend. Kate looks at the therapist's dark skin against her pasty white and suddenly longs for it to be Lanie sitting there instead.

'Have you ever been caught in an undertow?' Janelle asks. Kate gives the tiniest shake of her head. She can swim, of course, but she learned in pools, and she's never been brave (or stupid) enough to swim so far out into the ocean that she'd be over her head.

'Well, try to imagine this is something like that,' Janelle continues, regardless. 'You're captive to a force you can't control and it's dragging you around, and you can't swim out. And finally you have to accept that this is it, you're going to drown. So you relax, you stop exhausting yourself trying to fight your way to the surface. And that's when the wave finally lets you go. Maybe it's dragged you a very long way out, but you _w__i__ll_ get back to shore if you just take it nice and slow. Or, even better,' she adds with an unmistakably lascivious tone, 'if you let that man of yours swim out and help.'

'So, you're saying what? I need to let myself drown in order to live?'

'Honey, I have seen far worse arms to drown in.' Janelle stands up and puts the chair back where it belongs. 'Now, are you ready to finish? Because we still have two more reps to go.'

0-0-0

_An ending that is not an ending, I know. Because it's not the end. Stay tuned, part 3 to follow shortly._


	5. Another Thing About Mornings Part 3

_My deepest thanks to the Deep Fried Twinkies for beta, theta and gamma. Superspecial thanks to JillianCasey for beta above and beyond the call of duty on the physical details. _

0-0-0_  
_

It's been almost a month since Castle has left the house for more than a couple of hours; not since Beckett came to stay. Oh, it's not like he's been hovering over her the entire time - at least he hopes he hasn't, but he doesn't like to be out of reach. And it's not like he's got nothing to do with all that time at home. The third Nikki Heat book is, despite what's happened to his muse, cracking right along. Of course, in the book he's only broken Nikki's leg, and she's quite enjoying have Rook and Roach fetch and carry and kowtow.

Castle lets himself into Beckett's apartment and closes the door quietly behind him. Talking her into giving him the keys has taken nearly all afternoon; it wasn't until he threatened to go buy her a new wardrobe himself - at Victoria's Secret – that she finally gave in, though he sort of wishes she hadn't. That's one threat he'd have been perfectly happy to carry out.

Inside, the air in the apartment is stale, the surfaces covered with dust. Her father cleared everything spoilable out of the kitchen that first week, once they realised Beckett wasn't going to be coming home for a while. But no one's bothered about the plants and there's a faint smell of decaying leaf.

Castle draws the curtains back and opens the windows. He puts a couple of wilted, but generally hardy-looking things out on the fire escape, where hopefully they might spring back to health. They're not alone out there; Beckett's got a little city garden going in the far corner where the sun and rain supply their own maintenance. The dead plants he dumps, dirt and all, into a couple of Hefty bags he finds under the kitchen sink.

He washes his hands when he's done, drying them on some paper towels as he wanders slowly around the living room. Having pissed her off by poking into her private life before, he doesn't want to give in to the overwhelming temptation to dig through everything looking for clues to the stories she doesn't tell. But she knows he's here, and she knows what's on display; surely he's allowed to look at that? Photos of a teenaged Kate with her parents, of Johanna receiving her law degree, Mr and Mrs James Beckett on their wedding day. Family portraits going further back, in which he recognises her father as a boy with his parents and grandparents and what appears to be a trio of older sisters, another of a toddler with ribbons and pigtails which must be her mother. He was right about the eyes.

There are no pictures of Beckett as an adult, not even an Academy graduation photo, not anywhere visible in her apartment. He cannot help but wonder why. Her dad must have given her these photos to replace the ones she lost when her old apartment burned; did he not think to include anything more recent? Did she not ask for any of herself, or did she tuck them away somewhere else?

In the bedroom, Castle finds a suitcase under the bed, just where she told him it would be. Three suitcases, in fact, one nestled inside the other. He selects the largest and opens it on the bed.

Her closet is a surprise - the coat collection must be kept elsewhere, because for a woman who loves her fashion there isn't that much here. If he leaves out the half-dozen or so bizarrely un-Beckett cocktail dresses, everything else could fit into those three suitcases with room to spare.

He opens the drawers of her dresser - he's allowed to do that, he decides, since his remit includes nightclothes and underwear. There's no boyfriend drawer. Again there's not a lot, but what's there is tasteful and expensive. He wonders if she used to shop with her mother in the kind of boutiques where Martha likes to take Alexis - not the highest end of the fashion spectrum, or even the trendiest, more like classic with enough quirk to be original. That kind of taste isn't acquired, it has to be nurtured, and somebody certainly nurtured Kate Beckett.

He fills the suitcase with a selection of everything, though he's stumped by the shoes. There's a pair of thin leather flats, a pair of good hiking boots and two pairs of running shoes, one old and one relatively new. Everything else she owns has ridiculously high heels.

And she's never going to be able to wear them again.

It hits him so hard he has to sit on the bed, still holding one of the Blahnik boots he recognizes as her favourites. She wasn't wearing them the day she was shot, or they'd be hospital waste now, along with that leather jacket with the waterfall lapels she loved so much. Castle stares at the bottom of Beckett's closet, at the high heeled sandals and pumps and boots neatly lined up on their shelves, and it's like he's been slammed in the back with a two-by-four, taking his breath and his hearing and for a moment, even his sight behind the tears.

0—0—0

In the end, he throws the Blahniks in with the flat pumps and the newer pair of running shoes. It's stupid, he knows, and possibly counterproductive, but maybe she can give the boots a farewell wearing right now, while she's still on crutches and only walking on one leg. Maybe it will help her feel a little more like Detective Beckett again.

By the time he's letting himself back into the loft, he's no longer so sure that this was a good idea. Maybe a clean break would be better, maybe she could find something on the internet, a new style for the new person she's going to have to be. He wonders if it would be better to go put the boots back right now, or if maybe he could just hide them.

He forgets it all the minute a twisted, tortured scream shatters the silence.

He's up the stairs so fast he trips and bashes his knee and the pain goes all the way to his jaw, but she's screaming again, and so he heaves himself up, limping and hopping down the hallway, throwing the bedroom door back so hard it crashes into the wall.

The physical therapist startles at the noise, and turns to fix him with a murderous glare. Castle grabs the doorframe to steady himself, to stop himself from charging into the room. He hadn't expected she'd still be here.

Beckett hasn't reacted to his grand entrance at all. She's lying on her back on the massage table, where Janelle is still slowly pushing her left leg towards her chest.

'Almost there,' she says to her patient, her voice firm, but a thousand times kinder than the look she's just thrown at Castle. 'Almost there.'

Beckett is gasping for breath, her face swollen with agony and bright red, gripping the massage table on both sides with hands gone white from the strain. The therapist presses down once more, counting slowly back from five, finally succeeding in ripping one last agonised scream from Beckett's throat before she relaxes her stance and returns the leg to the table.

'You did good, Katie,' she says, rubbing Beckett's forearms to get her to release her grip. 'You did really, really good.'

Beckett finally lets go of the table, pressing her hands to her face instead, trying to press the sobs back into her mouth. It's all Castle can do to stay where he is. His still-throbbing knee and a second glare of death from the therapist are all that's stopping him from running across the room and gathering Beckett into his arms. He's never seen, could never even have imagined her this upset.

'Come on, let's get you into a more comfortable position,' Janelle is saying. 'And then I'm going to get you some ice, and you're going to feel a whole lot better.'

Getting Beckett settled on her side with a pillow between her knees draws forth only a whimper, but in its own way that's so much worse to hear than the screams. Castle starts to move into the room to help, but the therapist points sharply at his chest, then at the door, her meaning crystal clear. Leave, now. He stops where he is, but shakes his head. This is his house, his friend. He's going to be right here, like his mother told him.

The therapist picks up her duffle bag and her towel and heads for the door, a firm grasp on the front of Castle's shirt giving him no choice but to follow.

'Under no circumstances,' she says, when they've finally reached the bottom of the stairs and are out of earshot, 'are you ever to come in the room when I'm with my patient again.'

'She was screaming like she was being torn apart!' he hisses. 'What were you doing to her?'

'What I have to do. What I've been doing for the last few weeks, only she's held it all in because you were always home when I was here.'

The full horror of that is even worse than the shoes. 'Is that what her physical therapy's been like the whole time?'

'Do you mean is it always that painful?'

He can only nod, mouth suddenly sticky-dry.

'Yes, it's always that painful. That's why I always tell you she's asleep when I'm finished. She needs the time to pull herself together.'

'Can I do something to make it better? Should I be in there with her? Would that help?'

The therapist takes a long deep breath, as if finally letting go of her annoyance with him. 'I don't think an audience would do her any good right now,' she finally says. 'It might be different later, when she'll need some help to do some of the exercises on her own.'

His gaze is drawn upstairs. He would do almost anything for Kate Beckett, he's sure of that, but the thought of having to put her through something like what he's just seen-

'Don't worry. The truly torturous stuff is for professionals only.' Janelle picks up her duffle bag and slings it over her shoulder, giving him a long, indecipherable look. 'I said I'd bring her some ice, but maybe you should do that.'

'I'm sorry for barging in,' he blurts. 'I've just...I didn't know.'

'It's a common reaction you're having,' Janelle answers. 'No one likes to see people they love in pain. Unfortunately, brute force is the only way to get her range of motion back. I should probably warn you that these next few months are going to be hell. Not just for Kate, but for everyone around her. She's going to be pushed to the edge of her endurance, so you've got to be prepared to forgive anything she says or does.'

He raises himself taller, imagines a noble look on his face. 'I can do that.'

'And keep an eye out for signs that the depression is getting worse. You have to let me know immediately if she starts talking about giving up.'

Panic floods him at the very idea, leaving nobility coughing and gasping in its wake. Maybe that explains the tears, and the sleeping too much, and the stubborn refusal to see anyone except her father since she's been here. Maybe she's already thinking like that and it's taken him this long to notice.

'Can she go out? I mean out of the house?'

'Absolutely. Get her out, have people over. She needs to get back into the world.' Janelle gives him another long look, this time from head to toe. If he didn't know better, he'd swear she was checking him out. 'You know, she can have sex if she wants.'

Holding in the cough nearly makes his eyes pop out of his head. 'Doctors seem to conveniently forget to mention that unless you ask,' the therapist continues, as if she hasn't noticed. 'Which is stupid because let me tell you, in this situation? Endorphins would totally be her friend.'

He watches the woman go, stunned speechless for the third time today. Maybe it isn't only Beckett who's going to need a little help.

0—0—0

Castle enters the room more quietly this time, not sure what to expect. Beckett is still lying exactly as Janelle left her, looking helpless in a way that claws him to shreds.

She flinches when he lays the icebag carefully over her hip. 'It's just me,' he says.

'Oh god, Castle, go away.'

All this time he's been respecting her wishes, leaving her alone when she's asked, putting off her partners and Lanie and everyone else who's phoned repeatedly, asking to talk to her, wanting to visit. It's another layer peeling away from the onion, this realization that the more she needs someone, maybe even _wants _someone there, the more likely she is to push everyone as far away as she can.

He looks around, finds the chair he used to throw his clothes on at night. It's got the green robe on it now. He tosses the robe on the bed and brings the chair over to the massage table, setting it so that he's sitting at Beckett's back.

'When Alexis was about eight or nine,' he says, 'she went through this spate of nightmares. Never knew why, she seemed perfectly happy otherwise. But every couple of nights she would wake up crying and shaking. And I would lie down beside her, and do this until she fell asleep again.' He begins to trail his fingers across Beckett's back, aimless soothing circles made with just enough pressure to be felt through her still-damp shirt. 'It seemed to help.'

She doesn't answer, but she doesn't try to move away either. Castle leans against the padded edge of the table, one hand supporting his head while the other continues on its mission of comfort. If he has to do this all night, he already knows he can.

0—0—0

_Final part to follow. _

_A small note: Through the first season, all the bedrooms seemed to be upstairs, but when Beckett was staying at Casa Castle in Boom, Castle came out of a bedroom that seemed to be next to his study. Unfortunately, I'd already posted parts where I'd clearly said that his bedroom is upstairs, so poor Beckett is going to have to stay stuck up there. _


	6. Another Thing About Mornings Part 4

_Final lap. My eternal thanks to the DFMB, who had to suffer through umpteen rewrites as I tried to find the right way to tell the story I wanted to tell. Special sauce to JillianCasey for the 1001 nights building Castle theory, and to Cartographical for the commas. _

_To everyone who's been reading, and whom I've left hanging for a shamefully long time: thanks for your patience. I hope the wait was worth it. _

_This is the end of this story. The Mornings are not over yet. _

* * *

Another Thing About Mornings, Part 4

There was a time when Kate Beckett had been shamelessly affectionate, when her father had called her Katie-cat because she so loved to climb in his lap and be petted, when she held her toddler-chubby arms out to any stranger who offered a cuddle (which would have made it extremely easy to walk off with her as well, but that was her parents' worry, not hers). That hadn't really changed with adolescence and the realisation that – for reasons she still can't entirely fathom – she had the power to rob sensible males of all sensible thought just by smiling at them. Fortunately, she'd been skilled enough early enough (or, as her cop mind would now tell her, just fucking lucky enough) that she'd never gone too far with the wild child act, never run into the bad boy who was bad enough to take what he wanted by force.

Then her mother was murdered and she grew careful about everything. Sex, friendship, laughter, work: every aspect of her life rationally considered, everything under control.

Nothing is under her control right now, which might explain why she's torn between the desire to purr at the simple comfort of Castle's fingers stroking her back and the desire to roll away and scream at him to stop.

'I'm okay,' she finally manages to whisper. Indeed, she's already let him go on far too long.

His fingers don't hesitate for a moment. 'I know.'

She swallows and makes herself find a proper voice. 'I mean, you don't have to stay.'

'I know. Any minute now you're just going to get up and tango right out of here.'

'That's right. And if you're not careful it will be a stiletto to the instep on my way out the door.'

The fine wisps at the back of her neck stir as he leans closer. 'Why, Detective Beckett. I would have thought you were a much better dancer than that.'

She smiles despite herself, amazed that he can still have that effect on her. She hates to let him have the last quip, but her muscles are doing that thing where each one seems to be disconnecting from the other, and this includes her tongue. It's like sliding off a cliff, grabbing desperately on to a clump of weeds, and the moment where (in the movies at least) the character finally accepts the inevitable and just lets go. Only instead of falling, she floats. Still aware of that roaring fire in her hip, but her mind is somewhere else, far enough away not to care, safely cocooned inside the web he's drawing on her back.

0-0-0

When she wakes, she knows it's time for her to go.

Downstairs, she can hear them clattering about, the cheerful sounds of dinner being prepared. She checks the clock: 7pm. She's been asleep for almost three hours. A jovial argument breaks out between Castle and his mother, then there's a sudden silence punctuated by Alexis moaning _daaaaaad _in a teenaged pitch only a doting parent could stand.

It cuts through Kate like a finely honed blade, so sharp she almost doesn't feel it at first. And then she recognises that savage cut for what it is: family is private and this one isn't hers. No matter how kind they might be, how effortlessly generous.

She's like her mother when it comes to that. Her mother had been the only child of elderly parents, gone before Kate reached adolescence. Family was the other side, the rowdy bunch of uncles and aunts and cousins gathering reliably at holidays and weddings, where Kate remembers her mother always standing off to one side, holding a glass of wine and smiling politely. Welcomed and wanted, but never really part of the clan. Kate was Jimmy's girl, a bona-fide Beckett, and she had liked being amongst them, but her father was so much younger than his three sisters that she was sandwiched between their children and their children's children, a gap on either side of at least ten years. And so she had mostly stayed by her mother, at first because there was no one to play with, and later because she didn't want her mom to feel alone. Only now does she truly understand what her mother endured, quietly, all those years. There is nothing so lonely as being in the middle of the family that has taken you in, knowing you can never truly belong.

0-0-0

It's an argument Castle knows he can't win, because short of tying Beckett to the bed and taking away her crutches (and even then he suspects she'd manage to undo the ropes with her teeth and drag herself out the door) he can't keep her here against her will.

'You're not in the way. We want you here. We _like _having you here,' he tries, turning on the charm and the puppy-dog eyes. '_I_ like having you here.'

'I've been here long enough.'

She says it with that look that kicks puppies to the curb, that unwavering stare she usually uses on suspects who won't answer her questions, or on him when he's crashed through her barricades and she just wants him gone. The stubborn rock-hard glare of a Beckett pushed too far. He hasn't seen it in awhile, but he learned a long time ago that he can immutable force her all he likes, nothing is going to move her when she looks like that, no amount of argument or persuasion or appeals to common sense. Even an apology won't help this time; what could he apologize for when all he wants is to be there for her, for her to be here where's she's safe and cared for? Why is it, with her, that everything he has to give is either too much or not enough?

'You're not well enough to be on your own and you know that,' he finally says. Her gaze shifts, her tell that he's right and she knows it, but she's still not giving in. That's not just stubbornness, that's some reason she won't acknowledge, a story she's not willing to share. He feels suddenly exhausted by her, ready to contemplate a conditional surrender. 'All right, fine. I can't stop you. But I can't just let you go home and not keep checking to make sure you're all right.'

'Not ten times a day. And not by coming over unannounced.'

'Twice a day. Every day. At 8am and 8pm. I am going to call you, and I swear to god, Beckett, if you don't pick up the phone I'm going to come over and break your door down. If I text at any time and you don't text back within ten minutes, I'm going to come over and break your door down. If I knock on your door-'

'And I don't answer, you will break my door down.' She shakes her head, exasperated, but he could swear he saw a flash of something else. A smile? A..._gratitude_? She's going but she's _grateful _that he's going to keep an eye on her? Then why go at all?

Castle flings his hands in the air, a gesture of supreme frustration. Every time he thinks she's ready to let him in, she slams the door in his face and a window opens onto some hidden layer, some entirely new landscape, and he'll have to start all over mapping it out.

0-0-0

Here's another thing about mornings: the way it feels to wake in your own home, to roll out of bed and into the shower, to put on the gun and the badge that makes you who you are. You've made it home, but you can't do that anymore. You'll have to develop new rituals now, drinking your first coffee leaning on your crutches, taking your shower sitting on a chair. You think maybe you'll read all the books you never had time for, catch up on all the films you've missed. Mostly you sleep to make the time pass. You wake each morning thinking this will be the day you'll be able to take that first unaided step, the end of the beginning and the beginning of coming back, and every night you go to sleep afraid that the end is already here.


End file.
